Buchanan: Evolution accepted because of media bias

[Questioninggeller]

This is just too funny. Just read this ahistorical and anti-science column from Pat Buchanan:

What are the Darwinists afraid of?
Posted: August 08, 2005
WingNutDaily
By Patrick J. Buchanan


In the "Monkey Trial," 80 years ago, the issue was: Did John Scopes violate Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution? Indeed he had. Scopes was convicted and fined $100.

But because a cheerleader press favored Clarence Darrow, the agnostic who defended Scopes, Christian fundamentalism – and the reputation of William Jennings Bryan, who was put on the stand and made to defend the literal truth of every Bible story from Jonah and the whale to the six days of creation – took a pounding.
...
"Intelligent design" is the banner under which evolution is being put under siege, and the methodology of attack is the one Darrow used on Bryan: Prove to us that your theory is true, because it seems to contradict common sense.

If, for example, we are told a forest is uninhabited and, while walking in it, come across a garden, with plots of tomatoes, beans, corn and cabbage, reason tells us someone lives here. The garden presupposes the existence of a gardener, for it reflects intelligent design. As does Stonehenge, that millennia-old marvel of gigantic stones placed one upon the other in a fashion that is not accidental. Though we know not how it was done, an intelligent being did it.

The same is true of our universe. Not until recent centuries did we discover that the Earth is not its center but, with the other planets, revolves with mathematical precision around the sun. As a watch presupposes a watchmaker, an ordered universe argues for an ordered intelligence. Call it the First Cause, the Prime Mover, the Great Watchmaker, but this world appears to be no accident.

Our ordered universe was created out of chaos. Who or what created it? The latest theory of the evolutionists is the "Big Bang," a gigantic explosion, eons ago, did it.

But from common sense and experience, when – ever – has an explosion created order? Explosions destroy. And if the Big Bang was due to an explosion, where did the chemicals come from? And who lit the firecracker that caused the Big Bang?

As a wag has put it, to believe an explosion created an ordered universe is like believing a hurricane roaring through a junkyard can create a fifth-generation computer.

And there are gaps in human evolution. Where are the missing links between lower and higher forms? Where are the intermediate forms? Why are they not everywhere? As for that picture on the wall of the biology class, showing a reptile crawling ashore, then moving on four legs, then dragging his knuckles, then straightening up, then walking on two legs, then becoming the man of today – is that really how it happened? Or is that a theory, a belief, an act of faith of the Darwinists? Is there really all that much difference between that picture and one of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?

Science itself points to intelligent design. For most of man's existence, we did not understand the laws of gravity, the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry. But applying those laws today, we can send a rocket millions of miles and strike a distant planet, predicting impact to the minute. But does not the existence of these natural laws imply the existence of a lawmaker?

How can evolution explain the creation of that extraordinary instrument, the human eye? How can it explain DNA? Only in the last century did we understand that molecules can be broken down into atoms and subatomic particles, and the force that holds them together. Did all this come out of nothing? If it all came from something, where did the something come from?

What causes a disbelief in Darwinian fundamentalism, the Genesis of our secular elite, is not only Christian faith, but reason.
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Full article: WingNutDaily

There you have it, evolution won out because of the "evil secular press" ©!

Buchanan is no historian, scientist, and clearly doesn't even have a basic understanding of evolution. He thinks the Big Bang is part of evolutionary theory and doesn't bother looking at our understanding of the Evolution of the eye. Many of his questions could be answered if he opened some science books or typed his questions into google. It should be pointed out that four months after this article Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District decided that "ID's backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class."

Michael Shermer has a new article about called "The New Revisionism. What if Hitler Won the War?" and addresses Buchanan's newest book "Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost an Empire" in Skeptic. Basically, Shermer points out Buchanan book ignores all the scholarship about the Second World War to make his argument. That is similiar to the above article on evolution.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Sooooo many errors, so few copyinches.

 

[Mojo]

Even if we ignore the fact that it is irrelevant to the theory of evolution, this is particularly stupid:

And if the Big Bang was due to an explosion, where did the chemicals come from?

 

[paximperium]

It is a terrifying thought that this fella is of the "elites" of Republican political ideology.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

The thing that frustrates me so much about the whole 'debate' about intelligent design is that every objection to evolution gets answered and yet the discussion never moves on. Watchmakers, hurricanes in junkyards, the human eye, these questions have been asked and answered literally thousands of times, anyone with even a passing interest in this subject will know the answers and yet out in the hustings the believers will nod their heads and sagely declare, 'Yup, them scientists can't answer that'...... I'm surprised he didn't also ask 'Why are there still monkeys.....'.

 

[Delvo]

It is a terrifying thought that this fella is of the "elites" of Republican political ideology.

He isn't.

 

[Questioninggeller]

I see William Dembski now gets his science from Buchanan (which explains a lot):

30 June 2009
“Making a Monkey out of Darwin,” by Patrick Buchanan
William Dembski
uncommondescent.com post

It’s nice to see people like Pat Buchanan feeling more at ease about going after Darwin.
...

and Dembski links to

Making a monkey out of Darwin
WingNutDaily
Posted: June 29, 2009
8:48 pm Eastern

...
First is House passage of a "cap and trade" climate-change bill. Depending on which scientists you believe, the dire consequences of global warming are inconvenient truths – or a fear-mongering scheme to siphon off the wealth of individuals and empower bureaucrats.

The second is publication of "The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold," by Eugene G. Windchy, a splendid little book that begins with Huxley's lament.
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Exactly. Darwinism is not science. It is faith. Always was.
...

Buchanan has a long history of bucking consensus/fact on climate change, evolution, politics, Iraq war, and the history of the Holocaust. More specifically, "Patrick Buchanan, who wrote in his March 17, 1990, syndicated column that it would have been impossible for Jews to perish in the gas chambers of the Treblinka death camp."

The lengths creationists go to is sad.

 

[ravdin]

As for that picture on the wall of the biology class, showing a reptile crawling ashore, then moving on four legs, then dragging his knuckles, then straightening up, then walking on two legs, then becoming the man of today – is that really how it happened? Or is that a theory, a belief, an act of faith of the Darwinists? Is there really all that much difference between that picture and one of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?

It's sad that Buchanan doesn't seem to understand at all what he opposes. If this is how he sees "Darwinism", then he's correct to reject it- but it seems he's too intellectually lazy to find out what the science is really all about.

 

[linusrichard]

I've thought a lot of horrible things about Pat Buchanan, but I never thought he was an idiot before reading this thread.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The only good thing I can say about Buchanon is that he put the final nails into Perot's party.

 

[shadron]

Let me join in: What's really scary here is that Pat Buchanon is a Roman Catholic. Roman Catholicism doesn't have a problem with evolution, because it doesn't espouse bible literality, in particular yeccism. But Pat is taking up the banner, and if it's not for religious reasons, then it must be exclusively for political reasons. How exactly does Pat have an iron in this fire, and why is he brandishing it?

 

[shemp]

Pat Buchanan is living evidence of evolution. No deity would have created such filthy vermin. Therefore, he must have evolved.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

The second is publication of "The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold," by Eugene G. Windchy, a splendid little book that begins with Huxley's lament.

Feh, it sounds like a rehash of Well's crappy Icons. From this Amazon discussion thread:

Textbooks are short on natural selection examples. The horse chart was refuted in 1951 by George Gaylord Simpson, although it continues in some publications even today (Simpson noted a tendency to put the chart before the horse). In 1988 Gould started a campaign to rid textbooks of Darwin's giraffe fantasy; he had partial success.

 

[ferd burfle]

IMO, Pat manages to come off as more or less sane on PBS' "The McLaughlin Group" (US public television) but his writings are way around the bend.

Ferd

 

[Perpetual Student]

This little revelation brings to mind a bigger and more serious problem. For the most part, public officials and media personalities are profoundly ignorant of science, putting much of mankind's future at stake.

 

[Mark6]

It is a terrifying thought that this fella is of the "elites" of Republican political ideology.

He is not. Buchanan fell out with Republican Party more than ten years ago.